Amy Scott's Thoughts

Sharing the thoughts that bounce around in my brain!

Forever Friends! November 11, 2011

Filed under: Simply Me — Amy Scott @ 6:23 pm

At Cheesecake Factory - November 2011

I’m not a big fan of the term “best friend” because it’s so limiting. I have a small group of people in my life would I consider my best friends, but I like the term forever friend more! The truth is these people will be in my life until I die or they die. I’m pretty wimpy, so chances are I’ll go first. These are the people I expect to be in contact with… well, forever. My forever friends mean the world to me and I will never let them get away.

Last night I had dinner in Seattle with one of my forever friends! Maggie and I have been friends since our junior year in high school. I remember going off to college and being told that your high school friends don’t stick around so just stop investing in them. I was really hurt by the person who said that because I didn’t want that to be true. With a lot of intentionally, on both our parts, Maggie and I are still really close friends to this day.

We’ve been on missions trips together, talked through what colleges to go to, talked a lot

High School Graduation - June 2004

about our crushes and then eventually about our future husbands! Maggie was actually the one that greatly encouraged me to date Jeremy. I vividly remember sitting in Starbucks telling her I was really worried about the whole dating situation. I didn’t want to have a list – more than one boyfriend. I only wanted one and I was nervous about making a commitment because what if it didn’t work out. Maggie encouraged meto take that step and get over my fears. Obviously things worked out pretty well for Jeremy and I.

There are lots of experiences we’ve shared together. Too many to list or count. She is a friend that I truly trust. I can be honest with her and I know I can expect honesty in return. The shared laughter and the shared tears over the years has proven that our friendship runs deep. Maggie is a forever friend that I plan on calling when I’m in the nursing home! She can’t shake me! We’ve made it this far and I look forward to all the joy that our friendship will bring in the coming the years!

I love you, Maggie! Thank you for the many awesome years of friendship! I still believe that many more amazing years are to come!

 

Give Thanks November 10, 2011

Filed under: Children's Ministry,One Thousand Gifts Challenge — Amy Scott @ 1:47 pm

There is a craft that I love to do every year around this time.  November is the perfect time to focus on thankfulness and I love crafts that really highlight being thankful. Oriental Trading offers a great craft called Tree of Thanks. I just call them Thankful Trees. The tree is easy to construct and then the leaves are attached with glue dots. The glue dots make the craft mess free and make sure that the leaves don’t fall off – which will happen with regular glue or glue sticks.

I encourage the girls to use all their leaves and write one item they are thankful for on each leaf. Some of them moan like this is an impossible task, but I think it’s good to push them to think hard about what they are thankful for. For me, I feel like I could have used double the leaves I was given. Obviously this foam tree can’t hold all that I am thankful for. The one thing that I learned from doing the One Thousand Gifts Challenge is that there are so many gifts in each day. Yes, there are things like my home, family, and friends that are constant things in my life, but each day the good gifts of the Lord abound. The things I wrote on my tree are some of my top blessings and some just random ones- like pajamas.  My heart always feels so light as write down each gift the Lord has given to me. I look forward to this craft night every year. It’s a great visual reminder of how blessed we are and it’s a call to thankfulness.

Last night overall was a great night! We started of with part two of our Whoonu tournament. It’s a game all about your favorite things and we are taking turns to make sure that everyone in class gets to pick her favorite things. This game is great for getting to know what the girls like and don’t like. Our lesson time focused on prayer and what it is. I want the girls to come away with the idea that prayer is talking to God just like they would talk to their friends. Nothing fancy, but simple, honest communication with God. We celebrated Audrey’s birthday by singing “Happy Birthday” and each blowing out a candle. They loved it just as much as I thought they would! We closed the night by working on our Thankful Trees. As I left the church last night, I could help but smile as I thought about how blessed I am by my class and by the youth helpers that share it with me.

 

Audrey’s Birthday November 9, 2011

Filed under: Children's Ministry,Cooking Experiments — Amy Scott @ 2:31 pm

Let me tell you a funny story… At the beginning of the school year, my class helper, Aimee, made up Audrey. This imaginary student really took off with my class of girls and now we talk about Audrey every week. She is our class imaginary, special friend. The funny thing is I get confused from time to time and call her Aubrey… Good thing she’s not a real student or that would be bad news! It’s been a bonding experience to have Audrey be apart of a our class. The girls have really rallied around her and love to make up stories about what she likes and what she’s been up to. It’s quite hilarious! The class decided that today is Audrey’s birthday a couple of months ago. No surprise that is is on a Wednesday night so they can celebrate it.

I try to make something special for the class when I know there is going to be a birthday. Audrey’s birthday is no exception. Originally I planned on making yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It was easy. However, my creative side just had to take over. I’ve got a couple cans of pumpkin in the pantry that I’ve been dying to play with. So of course, I looked up recipes on my handy Betty Crocker app and found one that sounded good. I turned plain yellow cake mix into Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Pumpkin Spice Frosting.

I followed the cupcake recipe to the letter – except when it came to the pumpkin pie spice. I don’t own that spice, but I do own all the spice that make it, so I quickly threw together my own pumpkin pie spice. When it came time to think about frosting I was in a bit of a pickle. Most pumpkin recipes call for cream cheese frosting. I didn’t have any cream cheese frosting and I felt no need to run out and get some. Instead I used the basic vanilla butter-cream recipe and added pumpkin and spice! Thus creating Pumpkin Spice Frosting!

I tried to make the frosting really thick, but I found that when I started to pipe it onto the cupcakes it started to soften just a little too much. Instead of completely frosting the cupcakes I decided to go with a drizzle effect. The pumpkin on pumpkin flavoring is good, but I thought less is more in this situation. Once the cupcakes were frosted, I used holiday sprinkles to add the finishing touch.

Tonight I plan on bringing birthday candles and putting one in each on the cupcakes. I’ll let each girl blow out a candle in celebration of Audrey’s birthday. Since she is a special friend to the entire class, I figured that they all can take a unique part in celebrating her birthday.

 

Occupational Hazards November 7, 2011

Filed under: Children's Ministry — Amy Scott @ 7:30 pm

This was the title of the workshop Jeremy and I taught last Friday. As mentioned in my previous blog, I was pretty nervous about teaching a workshop at our network’s annual children’s leaders conference. For a long time Jeremy and I felt that we should teach a session and this year the opportunity presented itself. Jeremy was asked to speak and he quickly added me into the mix.

Now teaching adult is something I don’t do very often and co-teaching with my husband is something I don’t do very often. This combination had me on edge. It would have been easy to skip the experience and tell Jeremy to do it on his own. I’m very familiar with the role of being the cheerleader for my husband and staying behind the scenes. However, I knew that I will never grow beyond my current skills if I say no to new opportunities. One of the things I was told by a mentor was seize all opportunities – that meant beyond my writing ambitions and into the platform of speaking. I’m much more comfortable behind my keyboard, but I decided to step up to the challenge.

Before I tell you how the actual workshop went, let me give you some background. Jeremy and I offered four topics that we could speak on. The hardest one was chosen – working closely with your spouse. That is why we decided to call the workshop “Occupational Hazards”. We’ve learned a lot from working so closely together in ministry. Our workshop was set to highlight the good and the bad of partnering in ministry and how to set boundaries so that way your marriage stays top priority and thrives.

Jeremy and I had a lot of fun putting this class together. We laughed a lot! We’ve walked through the frustrations of shared space and spending a lot of time together – more than the average couple. We love being able to do ministry together, but we have learned from the ups and downs. Preparing this class alongside Jeremy was a great experience for me. Jeremy affirmed my call to ministry numerous times and really validated the role I play as his partner. Even if no one heard our class, just the experience was preparing it was a good one for me.

The day of the workshop, Jeremy and I slipped off campus from the conference and went to lunch. We went over our notes and made sure we knew who was speaking to what points. I went into the workshop session feeling fairly confident that we knew our stuff. I was right – we were totally prepared and I feel like we present our material the best that we could. The one downside was we presented to a group of six people. I was expecting at least thirty in my mind, so the reality of six was a little disheartening. However, we had a couple stay afterward to talk and ask us questions. I felt that even if we touched only six people, maybe those six really needed to hear what we had to say. Maybe only two did. I don’t know. All I know is that I did my best. I feel like Jeremy and I succeeded in our mission for the class. I’m not too concerned that we didn’t reach the multitudes… what we did was our best and that is enough for me!

Side note: The session will be podcasted on itunes. Once it is up and I have listened to it – I’ll post a link so you can hear it as well. Maybe the podcast will reach farther than the class itself. If not you can at least hear my first attempt at public speaking outside of Bethel Church.

 

There go the marbles November 2, 2011

Filed under: Children's Ministry — Amy Scott @ 1:57 pm

What a week this has been! Start off with a major event, add computer problems and not being able to work on important projects, add needing to prep for being out of the office at the end of this week… It just all feels like a lot for only 3 days! My office to-do list and my home to-do have both been long and with many boxes that needed to be checked off.

The stress of the week has taken it’s toll, but at least as of this afternoon I’ve made some sense of lists. The biggest thing still left on my plate is prepping for the workshop that Jeremy and I will be teaching on Friday at a children’s leaders conference. We attend this conference every year, but this will be the first time we’ve been presenters there. I think this new challenge is putting some extra nervous jitters into my frenzy of activity.

I teach kids. I like that dynamic. I know what to do. Teaching adults – totally different ballpark! To be honest, adults scare me! With a kid you have authority because you are older than them. With adults that is not the case. Jeremy and I don’t often co-teach, so that too will be an interesting element. The workshop we’re doing is called “Occupational Hazards” and it’s all about working close together in ministry. We hope to discuss the good and the bad of being so involved in the same ministry. Please pray for us as we finalize the details of this workshop. Also please pray that our presentation goes well on Friday. I’ll update you after the conference on how it all went!

 

The Happiest of Happy Days November 1, 2011

Filed under: Simply Me — Amy Scott @ 3:56 pm

What a whirlwind 24 hours! It seems like the autumn season and the Christmas season are merging and transitioning. Yesterday was Halloween. Every year we put on an event called Fall Fest at our church as a safe alternative to trick or treating. It was a fun night full of costumes, games, candy and conversation. We had about 400 kids walk through our doors, not too mention the parents and grandparents that followed. Our building was alive with activity and creativity! It’s always big event, but worth all the effort that goes into it.

Usually the morning after Fall Fest is a slow one. Sometimes Jeremy and I will stay home and sleep in so we can recover from the crazy night before. However, this year, I did the exact opposite. With the way things fell, Red Cup Day landed right after Halloween. For those who aren’t obsessed with Red Cup Day and have no idea what I’m talking about – let me explain. In early November, Starbucks debuts their seasonal red cups. It’s a holiday in my book and is the main kick off to the holiday season for me.

There was no way that my tiredness from Fall Fest would keep me from Starbucks this morning. I was up before the dawn and at Starbucks while it was still dark. I met my friend and mentor, Jeannie, there and we share in a fun holiday tradition – an early morning red cup. Sharing this holiday with her is always a treasured time. However, what is better than one red cup? TWO! I went back just before noon for my second red cup with a group of ladies from church. Oh the joy of Red Cup Day!

Red Cup Day means a lot to me. Like I mentioned, to me, it’s the beginning of the holiday season. It means that Fall Fest is over and our major autumn event is in the past. Commercials on TV will now change from Halloween to Christmas. Stores will begin stocking and decorating for Christmas. Now I meant what I said about loving this fall season and taking it all in. I’m guessing that reverse psychology set in, because right after saying I hadn’t listened to Christmas music, I started to crave it! So this week I popped in an old school Christmas CD from past. It felt right to be listening to Christmas music as I drove to my much awaited red cup.

Each day is a blessing and today’s gift is red cups! Happy Red Cup Day to one and all!

 

Home Sweet Home October 28, 2011

Filed under: Simply Me — Amy Scott @ 8:33 pm

Something has changed over the last few years. I used to hate being home for a whole day. I had to go and do something. I have no idea if it was because I was young and restless or because of the small apartment I used to live in. Ever since my husband and I purchased our home a few years ago, I have discovered that I love days where I get to stay home ALL day.

Today was one of those days were I got the joy being home for the entire day. It’s been a busy week with prepping for one of our major annual events, Fall Fest. I knew that the rest of my month would be busy and full (the few days that are left of October). Today was that one day where I could stay in my comfy clothes all day and not worry about going out. It was truly a perfect day.

I started the day by sleeping in – a Friday morning favorite of mine. After I got up, I tidied up the house as my hubby started a fire in our wood stove. Once the fire was made, Jeremy took off to go fishing. This allowed me a few hours of quiet to read and spend time with Jesus. My home becomes a sanctuary when I enter into my daily reading of the Bible. I’m swept away for a few hours into someone else’s shoes when I read a good book. It’s even more sweet when my Toby dog curls up on my lap and snuggles in.

When Jeremy got home, he created an amazing acorn squash soup for dinner and I made homemade bread. My sister inspired me yesterday by sending me a picture of loaves she created and I knew I wanted to try the same thing. She emailed me the recipe and I made bread for the first time. There was something so homey about being inside while it rained outside. The house smelled of soup and bread. Both seemed very fitting on this wet and dark fall day.

Days like this are few and far between, but when they appear I love to savor them for all they are worth. A good book, a fun baking project, a warm fire… just a few of my favorite things!

 

Class Snack October 27, 2011

Filed under: Cooking Experiments — Amy Scott @ 8:00 am

I guess that you’ve probably caught on to the fact that I like to bake. When I have the time, I’m choosing to bake instead of buy things. I’ve been making more goodies for gatherings. One such opportunity happens every week on Wednesday nights. I love making a treat for my class of 5th/6th girls. I’ve been trying to make more things for scratch. I’m also trying to do very seasonal baking. 

This week I decided to make brownies… from a mix… but I couldn’t just leave it the way it was! I decided to put a twist on this brownie mix that I make quite often. I’ve never made peanut-butter brownies, so I thought this would be a great time to try to add another layer to something I’m very familiar with. I hopped online and consulted good ol’ Betty to help me with peanut-butter element.  To jazz things up and give the brownies some fall color, I added Mini Reeces Pieces to the mix and sprinkled them on top. The colors are just right to make it feel like an autumn goody.

These brownies turned out fun and festive! Not too mention tasty! It was very rewarding to add another element to a classic! I’m learning that baking is a way I can bless others and share something that brings me joy. I didn’t intend for this blog to become a location for me to showcase food, but I’m finding it brings me great happiness and I’m enjoying the challenge of trying new things.

 

When You’re Looking October 26, 2011

Filed under: One Thousand Gifts Challenge — Amy Scott @ 2:49 pm

It seems to me that I have enjoyed the autumn colors a lot more this year. I normally love this season and look forward to it every year. However, this year seems more intense to me. Maybe it’s because I’m being more intentional. I’m looking around me more. I’m keeping my eyes open. Everyday I’m looking for new gifts. I’m constantly scanning the horizon and keeping myself alert to God’s blessings. With this kind of mindset, every time I hop in the car, I’m looking at the autumn colors and thanking God for His beautiful creation. Because I’m looking more, I’m seeing more. It makes sense, doesn’t it? It seems so simple. I started to ponder why this autumn meant so much to me. I’m pretty sure the trees aren’t the most beautiful they have ever been… I’m pretty sure the weather hasn’t been the most stellar it’s ever been. It’s all in the outlook. Things I would look at once and think “nice” are now something that I admire everyday. Each drive through dancing leaves or each tree is a blessing to me. My eyes are open to all the beauty around me and I’m not taking it for granted or tuning it out. Normally by October I’m already itching to listen to Christmas music and I get excited to see Christmas popping up in the stores. This year, I have been so content with fall that I have not yet moved on to craving winter and Christmas. Being content where I am has led me to not “needing” the next thing. I know I’ll be ready to move on to the next season and the joys that come with it soon, but for now I’m just looking around and finding the daily blessings in all I’m seeing. No need to pine for tomorrow – today is full!

 

Saturdays October 23, 2011

Filed under: Cooking Experiments — Amy Scott @ 8:00 am

I’ve found the last couple of Saturdays have held similar activities – cleaning the house and baking a special treat! The weekends have been filled with gatherings of friends and family. Thus, I’ve needed to have the house tidy and something to offer my guests. For life group two week ago, I made the applesauce spice cake. I’ve already posted how yummy that turned out! I’m already planning on making that again – this time for my Wednesday night class.   

Last Saturday was my first venture at pie making on my own. I’ve watched Jeremy make a pie and I’ve made a pie with Jeremy, but until last week I had never done it by myself. It was a bit of a personal challenge to show myself that I can do it. Apple pie was decided on because it was to be shared with family for my father-in-law’s birthday. He is big fan of apple pie, so it seemed that would be the best option. Since it was my first time, I did learn that I need to add more apples next time. I used an extra apple in the recipe, but I should have used another. I know that for next time. I also used a mix for the crust again. Now that I am out of the mix, I plan of making my own crust next time. Baby steps!

Today is a life group Sunday, so yesterday I decided to bake banana bread to take to the group. It might sound odd, but I’ve learned that bananas freeze well and they can then be saved until you plan on making some bread. It’s a chilly to prepare them, however, they taste great! I used the recipe from my Shueyville cookbook and it’s a classic! I shared the recipe in a previous blog if you are curious. The great thing about this recipe is it needs to be split into two loaves. We will take one loaf to life group and the other loaf will be munched on by Jeremy and I. It’s perfect for sharing!